How to be a leader

Monday, June 24, 2013

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Transitions can be tough, whether you’re a star performer taking up a managerial position or moving from being a top manager to a leadership role. Trade the skills that got you the promotion for ones better suited to the new role.

Transitions can be tough, whether you’re a star performer taking up a managerial position or moving from being a top manager to a leadership role. “Most high potentials are derailed not by things they know they need to learn but rather by things they did not even realize had changed,” write Alan S. Berson and Richard G. Stieglitz in Leadership Conversations: Challenging High-Potential Managers to Become Great Leaders.

Berson is an executive coach and Steiglitz is a business consultant and author of Taming the Dragons of Change in Business. Both are based in Potomac, Maryland, US.

In a chapter on “Inspiring people in turbulent times”, Berson and Stieglitz talk about how you can become more “promotable” and ways to practise great leadership in taking action. Edited excerpts:

We have coached scores of high potentials whose goal was to be promoted to partner or CXO. Many of them believed that their next promotion depended on the effectiveness of their personal actions. They were surprised to learn that how well they built their team’s capabilities and how effectively that team performed were more important than their direct contributions. The better the results their teams produced—without their direct involvement—the more promotable they became. (Also read: The making of a leader)

Consider the following tactics to expand your opportunity to move up the leadership ladder:

Train your replacement. You owe it to yourself, your people, and your organization to build a team that can excel without you, not simply carry on. Identify people who could fill your position, and have conversations with them to ensure that they know their jobs and learn yours too.

Get yourself ready. The higher you are in an organization, the greater the risk of failure after your next promotion. Minimize the risks by learning the actions and displaying the blend of management and leadership mindsets required to be successful at the next rung on the ladder. (Also read: Leading with conviction)

Make it about them. It is essential to demonstrate that you can motivate a team to deliver great results—not just get people to do what you tell them.

Manage the fit. What are your personal strengths and skills, and how well do they fit the position you want? Growing to fit the new position requires honest self-assessment, being open to feedback, and using that feedback effectively.

Get the most from your team. Each person is unique, so as a leader you must identify and apply each person’s strengths to produce the most he can as part of a team.

Act as a team. In competitive rowing, rowers willingly carry the weight of a coxswain because that position unifies their actions and steers the boat on the winning course. As the leader, you are the coxswain who sets the team’s direction and rhythm. Ensure that your people see your value as part of the team. (Also read: The key qualities of an emerging leader)

Leaders in all sectors are being challenged to do more with less to better utilize their people’s time, physical assets, and budget. Your first response to a shrinking budget might be to do more yourself. An alternative is to delegate more to team members either proportionally or by getting your high potentials to take on extra work. In the first case, you are likely to burn out and have insufficient time to lead. In the latter two cases, you burn out either everyone or just the best people on your team. There is a better way: eliminate low-value tasks.

Stefan, an associate director in a government agency, received a constant stream of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. He lamented that answering the requests was making it virtually impossible for his people to perform their core mission; his thinking was rooted in ways that worked well for him in the past. Doing everything that was asked was one of Stefan’s core values and a source of pride for him. We asked him to consider other approaches he could use to process the FOIA requests. Stefan met with his boss and asked her to assign some of them to her staff. A few hours later, she agreed that her staff would handle the more controversial requests because they involved policy issues. The impossible became possible, and his team continued to excel at their core mission.

Budget limitations are often less of a barrier than executives make them out to be. One private sector client, Adrienne, desperately needed additional funds to finish a priority project by the year’s end. We encouraged her to contact her peers to see if any of them had funds remaining in the current budget year that could be transferred. It turned out one of them had just cancelled a project, and funds were indeed available.

The core lesson in these two stories is to think broadly in your definition of your team—it is more than just you and your direct reports. It includes everyone who has a stake in your success. Look for alliances that can dramatically expand the capabilities, resources, and reach of your team. A second lesson to understand is that when you do not ask a question, you are really the one who is saying no.

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